Cumulant theory of the unitary Bose gas: Prethermal and Efimovian dynamics

TL;DR

This paper develops a cumulant theory for a quenched unitary Bose gas, capturing Efimov physics, prethermalization, and the transition to thermalization, with predictions validated against experiments.

Contribution

It introduces a cumulant framework that simultaneously describes Efimov effects and ergodic evolution in a strongly interacting Bose gas.

Findings

Identification of a universal prethermal stage with a kinetic temperature

Observation of Efimov signatures in many-body dynamics

Quantitative agreement with experimental quenched Bose gases

Abstract

We study the quench of a degenerate ultracold Bose gas to the unitary regime, where interactions are as strong as allowed by quantum mechanics. We lay the foundations of a cumulant theory able to capture simultaneously the three-body Efimov effect and ergodic evolution. After an initial period of rapid quantum depletion, a universal prethermal stage is established characterized by a kinetic temperature and an emergent Bogoliubov dispersion law while the microscopic degrees of freedom remain far-from-equilibrium. Integrability is then broken by higher-order interaction terms in the many-body Hamiltonian, leading to a momentum-dependent departure from power law to decaying exponential behavior of the occupation numbers at large momentum. We find also signatures of the Efimov effect in the many-body dynamics and make a precise identification between the observed beating phenomenon and the binding energy of an Efimov trimer. Throughout the work, our predictions for a uniform gas are quantitatively compared with experimental results for quenched unitary Bose gases in uniform potentials.